Sunday, March 18, 2007

A Sunday Afternoon Thought

Years ago, my Aunt Dot used to say to me, "You have something in common with every person in the world. Before you criticize them, you should stop and figure out what it is you have in common with that person."

I've been very critical of Alberto Gonzales. In terms of upholding the Rule of Law, he has the most important job in our country and I've long felt that all he does is to warp it, trample it and misinterpret it to try and support the view that anything the current (and only the current) occupant of the Oval Office and his crew does is legal, constitutional and proper. George W. Bush could stick up a liquor store and Gonzales would argue it was within the president's power to do so.

But I tried to do what my Aunt suggested. I sat down and tried to figure out what I have in common with this man. I'll admit it took a while but I think I've got it. I think I know what I have in common with this man. Within two weeks, neither one of us will be the Attorney General of the United States.

• Posted at 3:06 PM · LINK

Like No Business I Know...

The trial of Phil Spector starts tomorrow. He's accused of murdering a young actress named Lana Clarkson. I gather the case comes down to the fact that (a) Spector is a known looney and alcoholic who was drinking that night and has a history of irrational actions, some involving firearms and (b) there's testimony that at the murder scene, Spector said he'd shot her accidentally. Those are pretty damning facts. Against this, his attorneys intend to argue that Clarkson obviously committed suicide in the home of this rich guy she'd just met, and that the two men who say Spector said what he said cannot be believed because...well, uh, we all know that when someone dies at your home, the first police officer on the scene and your chauffeur always try to pin it on you.

Obviously, that's a pretty shaky defense but Spector has brought in a heavyweight legal team and there's a reason those guys get paid as much as they do. Also, O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake have done much to destroy the concept of the Open-and-Shut Case, especially against celebrities. True, they were able to argue that they weren't there when the murders were committed and Spector can't...but he has more money than either and that's gotta be worth something.

It all sounds like a courtroom drama I really, really don't want to follow. I met Lana Clarkson a few times when she was dating a friend of mine. She seemed very nice and very smart, and I'm positive I won't be watching when Spector's lawyers start killing her all over, trying to sell the idea that her career was in ruins and that she was suicidal. I didn't know her well enough to say with any authority that the latter wasn't the case but it sure doesn't jibe with the Lana I saw. What I am sure of is that almost everyone who acts for a living has those periods when the prospects of future work look as remote as hers might have at certain points...and that that's almost never a reason for picking up a gun and exiting stage left.

One of the fascinating (some might say "maddening") things about show business is that on Tuesday at 2:00, it can feel like no one will ever again let you within fifty yards of a camera or audience and that you stand a better chance of tap-dancing to Jupiter than of getting another acting gig. And then at 2:30, you get a call for an audition, they see you at 5:00 and Thursday morning, you're in make-up and a movie. That doesn't happen as often as you might like but it happens often enough that you have to go a long time — certainly longer than Lana had — before you believe it's all over. Lack of roles alone is rarely a motive for putting yourself in the Variety obituary column. In fact, it may be the opposite. You want to wait until that obit's going to be a little longer.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that while anyone could be irrational to the point of suicide, I'm suspicious of the simple explanation like, "She decided to kill herself because she hadn't had an acting job in a while." That always sounds to me like something a beginning screenwriter comes up with after they take one of those courses that teaches you to give every character a simple, one-line motivation for everything they do. In real life, it's never that uncomplicated. Richard Jeni had plenty of bookings lined up and offers.

I'm thinking I need to do something to affect the outcome of this trial and I don't mean what happens in the courtroom. I can't do anything about that. But I can do something to limit the damage that this trial does to me. I can not follow it. This may be rough — as you can see from a few posts back here, I still have a Pavlovian interest in the O.J. case — but I'm going to do my best. If this isn't the last mention of Phil Spector on this site until the verdict is read, we'll all know I've failed.

• Posted at 11:52 AM · LINK

Today's Political Musing

I can't link you to Frank Rich's weekend column in The New York Times but I can quote the first paragraph...

Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

The rest of the piece is a list of things prominent people have said about the war that now seem to be foolish, disingenuous, unrealistic or just plain lies. They're all the kinds of statements that no one can now argue were wise or valid, so they have to defend them as good faith judgments by people who through no fault of their own were misled or misinformed, and of course you can't fault someone for believing faulty information and acting on it. Even if the person is Dick Cheney and acting on that faulty info has tripled the value of Halliburton stock.

Lately, it seems to be all the rage to ask politicians if they think homosexuality is immoral. I'd like to see them all asked how they feel about people getting wealthy from a war that's killing people left and right, and driving the U.S. into a financial Grand Canyon. Anything about that make you at all uncomfortable?

• Posted at 10:54 AM · LINK

Splitsville

The wise and sage Earl Kress announces, surely to the disappointment of many, that The Banana Splits Adventure Hour is off the list of old Hanna-Barbera shows that will be coming out on DVD in the near future. The source material, sez Earl, is simply in too bad a shape for a good DVD to be produced without a lot of time and moola. Better they yank it from the release schedule than put out an inferior product.

I was never a huge fan of that show. Liked the theme song, liked some of the blackouts, liked hearing Daws Butler and Paul Winchell and Allan Melvin doing voices. Never quite sparked to the individual features in the show, nor did I understand the mix of comedy and adventure. But some folks loved it and I think anything that some folks loved ought to be available on DVD...though they should wait 'til they can do it right.

• Posted at 1:27 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's another Garfield cartoon I wrote. I called it, for reasons that will become obvious if you watch, "The Creature That Lived in the Refrigerator Behind the Mayonnaise, Next to the Ketchup and To The Left of the Cole Slaw."

As always in these, Lorenzo Music was the voice of Garfield, Thom Huge was the voice of Jon and Gregg Berger — whom you saw recently in a video clip here — was the voice of Odie. The Police Sergeant was also voiced by Gregg and there's an odd thing there. In the Ink and Paint Department at the studio, there was a lady who took it upon herself to make sure that we didn't have a show where a disproportionate percentage of the human beings were Caucasian. That was a commendable goal but she was kind of arbitrary about who she decided should get minority status. Every so often, she'd just decide to make some supporting character black even though the artist who designed that character hadn't had that in mind and the voice track had already been recorded with, say, an Irish accent...or at least a voice which certainly didn't suggest a non-white race. Sometimes, the producer or I caught it. Sometimes, we didn't. The Police Sergeant in this cartoon is an example of a "didn't." (She also sometimes missed noticing the other way and a character we intended as black came out about as Afro-American as Audrey Hepburn.)

The voice of the Police Sergeant's assistant Jones was done by Jim Davis, creator of Garfield. The voice of Shmidlap was done by Thom Huge, and the little girl's scream at the end was done by my friend, B-Movie Babe Jewel Shepard, who was helping me out in the studio that day. Jewel has screamed in a lot of movies, so I decided to have her scream in one of my cartoons. Here's that cartoon...

• Posted at 12:55 AM · LINK